Behrendt Wernher

Mag.Wernher
Behrendt MSc

Wernher Behrendt is Senior Researcher at Salzburg Research. He is co-ordinator of the IKS Project which is bringing semantic technologies to open source content management systems. One of his on-going research interests is the notion of knowledge content objects which are intended to capture human-readable knowledge as well as the „translation“ of that knowledge into machine-readable representations.

Wernher holds a Mag.rer.nat in English and Geography (Karl-Franzens University Graz), and an MSc in Cognitive Science (Victoria University, Manchester).

From 1989 to 1995, he was a Senior Research Associate in the Informatics Department at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (UK), working on embedded knowledge based systems in distributed multimedia presentation systems and on the methodology for building industry-strength knowledge based systems. From 1995 to 1998 he was a Senior Research Associate at Cardiff University (UK), working on interoperation between heterogeneous information systems.

Wernher developed and taught courses on Computer Science and has worked on research projects ranging from software engineering methods and quality assurance to the reengineering of legacy information systems using distributed systems middleware.

His scientific interests include automated translation and migration techniques, and the inclusion of the logic programming paradigm in standard software engineering. He sees a great intellectual challenge in transferring the theoretical results of computer science into clean prototypes that allow for real-world experimentation and for feedback into the theory. In the IKS Project, the challenge is not only concerning the research, but also the ability to transfer scientific knowledge into real innovation. This means the technology must have measurable impact in the markets of those firms who use the technology to create better products.

Another „mediating passion“ for Wernher is to bring computer science to the Humanities, because he believes that computing gives the humanities not only productivity tools, but also a chance for philosophical dialogue leading to a new common understanding of the world. Likewise, the humanities give software engineers insights into the marvellous complexity of human cognition and communication, leading to a deeper appreciation of what computers can do and why computer software sometimes makes us scream in frustration.

Wernher thinks that looking at „heroic failures“ in the history of computer science is more educating than bragging about „new breakthrough technology“. He also believes – contrary to others – that the human brain has no hard limit on its capacity to remember things and he is convinced that knowledge NEVER gets outdated. In fact, if something gets outdated then that’s because it did not capture enough or the right, knowledge! Remember this when you look at the next bit of outdated technology. 🙂